States, under President George W. Bush, has not only embarked on a concerted effort to eliminate Al-Qaeda and to remove the Taliban's supporters from Afghanistan, it has also led a coalition in the invasion of Iraq (characterized by President Bush as a member of an Axis of Evil) to remove Saddam Hussein from power and to put in place a democratic government there.
This comes somewhat more than a decade after President George Herbert Walker Bush led a coalition inclusive of a number of Middle Eastern states to liberate Kuwait from Iraqi invaders (Gaddis, 2005; Harding, 2003). In the period from the early 1990s to the present, U.S. foreign policies focused on the Middle East in general and the countries of Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and particular, have been restructured to build new relationships, establish new mechanisms for democratic governance, create regional stability, and ensure the ongoing flow of vital oil reserves necessary to grow the U.S. economy (Jervis, 2003).
It is therefore important to recognize that while many va
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